98 pages • 3 hours read
Neal BascombThe Nazi Hunters
Nonfiction | Book | YA | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Introduction
The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World’s Most Notorious Nazi
- Genre: Nonfiction; young adult history
- Originally Published: 2013
- Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 1000L; grades 7-9
- Structure/Length: 16 chapters, epilogue; approx. 272 pages; approx. 5 hours, 29 minutes on audio
- Central Concern: At the end of World War II, Adolf Eichmann, the head of the Nazis’ Final Solution, disappeared. The Nazi Hunters tells the story of the elite team of spies that hunted and captured him in Argentina and then smuggled him to Israel to stand trial, bringing the atrocities of the Holocaust to light for the public.
- Potential Sensitivity Issues: The Holocaust; genocide; Nazi atrocities against Jewish people
Neal Bascomb, Author
- Bio: Born in 1971; American journalist and author known for writing books on popular history; graduated from Miami University with a BA in Economics and English Literature; worked as a journalist in London, Paris, and Dublin; editor for St. Martin’s Press
- Other Works: Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City (2003); Red Mutiny: Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin (2007); The New Cool: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts (2011); The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb (2016); The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War (2018)
- Awards: Sydney Taylor Book Award (2014); YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award (2014)
CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:
- Justice for the Victims of the Holocaust
- The Malleability of Identity
- Legality Versus Morality
STUDY OBJECTIVES: In accomplishing the components of this Unit, students will:
- Develop an understanding of the historical and psychological contexts that drive the Israeli government to seek justice on behalf of the Holocaust victims.
- Analyze paired texts and other brief resources to make connections via the text’s themes of Justice for the Victims of the Holocaust, The Malleability of Identity, and Legality Versus Morality.
- Compose a transcript for a mock trial that demonstrates an understanding of the trials of Nazi war criminals, based on text details.
